By Kelsi Peace, Features Editor
Students can celebrate environmental awareness with a free game of bowling, thanks to Wednesday’s Students’ Association meeting. With push from an environmental science class, the Outdoor Club, the Evangelical Youth Climate Initiative and now the Students’ Association, campus may boast 15 to 20 new recycling receptacles – one per building – by the end of the semester.
At the SA meeting Wednesday, freshman senator David Vanderpool, Bible, missions and ministry major from Brentwood, Tenn., presented “a resolution to support recycling facilities and to encourage their use among the students and faculty,” according to the document. Congress unanimously passed the resolution.
According to the resolution, the university produces more than one metric ton of garbage per week, 38 percent of which is recyclable. Vanderpool said while there are receptacles on campus now, there are not enough. With the resolution, SA officially “request[s] that the university administration set up recycling receptacles in each dorm and building on campus, and encourage[s] students and faculty to help preserve the earth through recycling.”
The next step, Vanderpool said, is to write a bill requesting money from Congress for the receptacles, a project Vanderpool said he plans to begin immediately. His goal, he said, is to complete the project before the end of the semester.
Vanderpool said while not all students are overtly concerned with the environment, convincing apathetic students to support the project proved easy. He also said administration has been very supportive as well.
Congress also agreed to pay $600 to allow free bowling for students, faculty and staff Tuesdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., after passing the bill by representative Kat Edyvean, freshman nursing major from Spring, 38-7 with absentee votes.
The bill will allow free bowling beginning the week after spring break through the end of the semester, excluding finals week.
“I think in the end, we’ll probably be getting the better end of it,” said Tyler Cosgrove, SA executive treasurer and senior finance major from Amarillo.
Edyvean, who has been working with Joel Swedlund, manager of the Campus Center, for the past five weeks on agreement, said SA is essentially renting the bowling alley for students.
“Part of it is just kind of a reward for students,” Edyvean said.
Cosgrove encouraged Congress to submit ideas for use of the $3,250 allotted to Congress; the funds will be used for the bowling bill and could be used for the recycling initiative if Vanderpool submits a bill requesting funds.
